Each age interprets its universe in terms of what is currently important to it. Ancient animistic people wanting to make sense of the starry sky saw it as a zoo of people and animals—the Hunter, the Swan, the Lion, the Dog. The mechanical age of the eighteenth century bred a mechanistic philosophy; in the clockwork universe, God was the watchmaker who set the wheels spinning and then stood back to watch his creation turn; the newly discovered constellations of the southern hemisphere included the Octant, the Triangle, and the Microscope. Our present Computer Age sees the universe as an ever-changing flow of information, and if we were to discover the stars today our first instinct would be to try to decode their message.
Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, Collapse of chaos: Discovering simplicity in a complex world, 1995, p. 288
